The Man in Green
by Melusine10
Summary: Loki is befriended by a young girl immediately following his failed attempt to enslave Earth. He continues to visit her in his projected form, helping her through the rough and tumble trials of growing up. Loki has always been Norah's hero, but when she learns his true whereabouts, will she save him as well? Begins post-Avengers but quickly moves post-Thor: Dark World.
1. Chapter 1

Norah Fall was just a toddler when New York was attacked. The images of that day are permanent scars in the memories of every American, now familiar parts of each of us, though still painful. One minute her preschool playmates had been scrambling over the jungle gym in Central Park, peels of giggling laughter rolling out of their little mouths. Then a shadow fell across the city and all was plunged into chaos as a battalion of terrifying alien ships settled over them in the sky. The group took shelter under a picnic pavilion, cowering under the protective arms of their teachers like frightened ducklings. During the raging battle, laser shots zinged by their heads and caped crusaders fought their way through hordes of invaders. The entire experience had been so surreal - terrifying and yet impossible - like something out of a blockbuster movie.

When the tide of the fight had finally turned and the war was won, the band of brave heroes who had saved their planet regrouped in the park, amazingly, not far from where they had weathered the storm. Norah remembers how Captain America had hoisted one of her playmates up. Their teachers were cheering and crying at the same time, offering the Avengers, as they would come to be known, profuse thanks for saving them in a fight no one could yet even understand.

Yet the tall man in green - who Norah had clearly seen warring alongside the other caped heroes - was in chains, muzzled like a vicious dog and ignored as his comrades celebrated. Her young mind could not accept how such a thing could be. He was a superhero too, was he not?

The beautiful man stood haughtily, shoulders squared. He cast an arrogant gaze about his surroundings, revealing nothing but distain in his features. Until he felt the eyes of a curious child burning into him. He caught the tiny slip of a creature staring at him from across the field and for a brief moment, his eyes softened. In them, Norah saw fear. Instinctively, she snatched up a stray dandelion, roots still attached, and ran to him, breaking free of a schoolteacher's restraining arm.

Blame her actions on the blind ignorance of childhood or say that it was the pure compassion of a little girl's heart – that is how others dismissed it. This is certainly how her parents explained it to themselves. But those would be the lies adults tell themselves to smother an awkward reality and make the world seem rounder, more manageable. But the world is not that way, now is it? No. It is a wild garden, full of the inchoate and unexplainable. As she ran across the plush grass towards the stranger, his raven black hair swirling franticly about his head, he seemed to be made of just that – mystery and magic and the untamed things that are life incarnate.

Norah came to an abrupt halt before him and he towered over her, expression blank. With chubby fingers she offered him the flower, blinking with wide eyes and brushing her unruly bangs from her face. He took it gingerly in a cuffed hand and looked at it in fascination. Not far behind her adults were screaming in horror and sprinted to retrieve her, closing the distance between them. He quickly pointed to a pocket, dipping down so the child could reach inside. She withdrew a small figurine carved in green stone. Her eyes lit up with joy and he held up a single, pale finger over his metal muzzle. Norah gave him a wide smile and stuffed the toy down her pants, effectively hiding it. The man in green gave her a secretive wink just as world spun topsy-turvy. Someone had grabbed her roughly and tossed her over their shoulder.

-OOO-

It was several weeks after the attack in New York when the man first came to visit her. He materialized right before her eyes. Without a word, he bent over to peer into her dollhouse, inspecting the miniature room where his gift statue had been carefully tucked into a bed. He then sat down cross-legged on the bedroom floor beside her.

"Hi!" she squealed. "Did you come to play with me?"

The man nodded. He appeared to blanche slightly, then his whole disposition brightened.

"Name?" he asked. His features didn't move in tune with his voice, rather the sound seemed to carry on the very air itself as disembodied whisper into the shell of her ear.

"I'm Norah. These are my ponies," she gestured to the plastic horses lined up on the carpet. "That's Sam, my stuffed dog. Mommy says he's a toy, but he can come to life when no one sees. What's your name?  
He smiled, displaying perfect white teeth. "I am Loki of Asgard."

"Hi Loki. I don't like your friends. They're poopheads. Wanna play a game?"

The apparition threw back his head and laughed heartily, though not a single sound issued forth. He stilled and only then did she hear him.

"I love games, poppet. What shall we play?"

Norah leapt up and began to divvy the horses between them, explaining the family relations in her imaginary herd. She tried to pass him her favorite black stallion, but it passed through his palm.

"Are you a ghost?" Norah whispered.

"I'm a god," he replied with a wolfish grin and a roguish twist of his eyebrows.

* * *

**A/N:** So what did you think? Hope you liked this first little teaser. I *really* need reviews to feed the muse, otherwise I get frustrated and think no one cares to see a story continue or it's just boring and I'm a crap writer. So please review, even anonymously if you prefer. Thanks!


	2. Chapter 2

He came to her often in those first years. Loki spoke little, as it seemed to tax him to conjure sound. He could manipulate objects, but that tired him out even faster. Norah was happy to burble away at him, telling him about her friends, her secrets, her dreams. Sometimes he would disappear for a length of time, only to return and exhaust himself by reading her to sleep with their favorite book of fairytales. On other occasions she could simply feel him in the air. She recognized the crackling signature of his energy and knew he was around, keeping an eye on her.

On her eighth Christmas, she awoke to find a heavy checkered board game on the bedroom floor, wrapped with a huge satin bow. It looked like chess, but was organized with a green team in the middle surrounded by a larger force of red. It had all the pieces save one – the king at the center of the board was missing. She happily realized she had the game piece all along, secreted away in her dollhouse. It was a relief to finally understand where the statue belonged. She giddily placed it into position.

"The concept is simple," Loki had explained in his velvety voice. "In life, we always begin at a disadvantage. What you do next is both a matter of choice and skill. How will you gain the upper hand when you're flanked by enemies on all sides?"

"So I'm green?"

The diaphanous illusion rolled his eyes and nodded.

The child shrugged. "Okay. But this is just a practice round. It doesn't count if you win."

"Fine. Now, you must _always _protect your king…" he said silkily.

Loki taught her the rules of play and in time she would become a formidable opponent in the old Norse game called Hnefatafl.

-OOO-

Her parents ignored her monologues then, assuming they were the idle chatter of an only child and her imaginary friend. As she grew older, her mother and father would argue at night when they thought she was asleep. Norah was just immature, her father pointed out. No, her mother countered, there is something wrong with her. She talks to _that _man. The ugly way she uttered those words curdled in Norah's mind.

"The books say you are a bad person," she dared to utter one afternoon when Loki appeared lounging in her bean bag. Norah was then eleven years old.

He shrugged and threw aside the horse camp novel he'd found and had been thumbing through.

"This is trash. I'm getting you something useful. Perhaps you'd like Aeschylus?"

Norah was too agitated to be distracted from her war path.

"Did you do it with a horse?"

He shot her an unconvinced look.

"Hmm. Okay. Did you ditch your wife and kids?"

A shake of the head.

"Do you now or did you ever have a wife and/or kids?" she clarified, mimicking the lawyers she'd seen on tv. Norah knew too well how Loki could twist the truth around the edge of a single misspoken word, let alone a poorly phrased question.

Another firm shake.

"No? Are any of the stories true? Did you cut off all that girl's hair?"

He looked confused. What girl, his expression seemed to say.

"Sif? I read about her too."

A headshake, this one a little too smugly confident.

"Liar, liar pants on fire," she retorted. "You did!"

He laughed in his beautiful, carefree manner. Leave it to a little girl to pick apart the master of deception's fibs. Norah couldn't help but giggle along with him. The breathy, bell-like ring of his laughter was contagious. It was also easily one of her favorites sounds in the world.

"You are real, even like this, right?" she asked, growing sullen.

Nod.

Norah dropped her voice to faint whisper. "No one knows what happened after the war. I've tried to Google you. I think the government covered it up. There aren't even any pictures of you, just weird websites that swear you were in Germany. Where are you, Loki?"

He gave a wry smile and waved his hand.

"Oh, you're around? You dork! You don't take anything seriously," she sighed.

-OOO-

In the late spring of her fourteenth year, she nursed a huge crush on a ginger-haired boy in her biology class. When Norah finally wound up enough courage to ask him to the 8th grade dance, he laughed in her face. She bravely carried her broken heart back home without shedding a single tear. It was perhaps the single longest bus ride home in history.

Only once she had collapsed in the respite of her bed did she let herself cry for hours at being so cruelly rejected. Loki lay next to her, listening. Though his eyes darkened angrily when she described the gut-wrenching part where the boy had called her a 'fat bitch,' he didn't pour honeyed words in her ear in some feeble attempt to make her feel better about the meanness of the world. Instead he offered her the solace of a perfect confidante. He didn't think it necessary to mention the enchantment he had woven as she talked through her feelings. The boy would be cursed to a year of severe acne the moment she next laid eyes upon him.

"I wish you could be my boyfriend," she complained with a huff, wiping her smeary face.

Loki quirked an eyebrow in disbelief.

"Well, okay. You are _way _too old for me and that's totally disgusting. Like a couple thousand years too old. But still, you're cute for an ancient dude, you're mostly nice, and you're a god, so you're prolly rich as hell. You have an actual castle. Too bad my Prince Charming is just a magic beam of light." She dramatically smacked her arm through the spot where he lay, just to emphasize her point.

Loki narrowed his eyes. "Too bad my flower girl is a spoiled brat!" he teased and popped out of sight.

A few days later she discovered a stunning green gown in her closet. The plunging back was daring, but tasteful. A note attached read:

_You'll be Belle of the ball; no need for a loathesome Beast. Save the first dance for me? __L_

It was always like that between them. They talked, they bickered. They teased one another and laughed far too hard. He was her constant and closest friend and she was his, at least she liked to think that.

She told him everything and he told her many things, albeit in brief spurts as his energy allowed. Some topics were taboo, as always seems to be the case with adults. Loki spoke fondly of his rowdy and mischievous childhood, but would not discuss his relationship with his brother later in life. He spoke of his mother with the greatest tenderness, but grew clammy when asked about his father. Norah's imagination was so full of Loki's incredible descriptions of Asgard that she felt she knew it as well as her own hometown. She dreamed of it often, picturing her raven haired prince looking out of one of the gilded palace's shining towers. And yet when she demanded to know Loki's present whereabouts, he would smile and distract her with a riddle or a tale, or sometimes, he would simply disappear.

-OOO-

Though she was careful to keep their conversations private, Norah occasionally slipped up and spoke a little too loudly or forgot to close her door. One day her mother overheard one too many times. It was the poor woman's breaking point.

Then there were trips to the psychologist, to child development specialists, and finally, to doctors who strung her up to bleeping, buzzing machines. The so-called "experts" entreated her to admit her invisible friend was pure fancy. At first, she defended herself. They did not relent. Give up the childish games, they said. She calmly explained she talked to a god.

That lovely confession earned her a short stint at an in-patient treatment facility to rehabilitate her "fixated" personality. It was a miserable experience. Apart from the short-tempered nurses and self-important doctors, when she finally admitted which god, precisely, she spoke with, SHIELD descended on the hospital and unleashed their full wrath upon her. Two agents dragged her into a relentless, seven hour interrogation about her knowledge of the God of Mischief. They had been watching her - tracking anyone who had any contact with the supposedly non-existent Loki Odinson. SHIELD had done a fine job at covering Loki's involvement in New York, erasing his every trace, though to that very day a staunch group of conspiracy theorists and outliers like her claimed otherwise. Finally, they deemed her knowledge too superficial to be significant and cleared her as a non-threat, but not before submitting a strongly worded recommendation that she continue her psychotherapy treatments.

"Crazy fangirls," she heard one agent quip as they packed up. "Why do they always go for the bad boys? Why can't they just get obsessed with Steve? Sure would make our lives easier." He cast a dirty look back at her over his shoulder.

The worst insult was that Loki never once appeared there to comfort her. She lay in a cold room bunked with several other 'nutty' girls, utterly alone and beginning to question her sanity.

When she finally returned home, months later, it wasn't long before Loki showed up. His complexion was wan and he had a crazed look in his eyes.

"Where have you been?" he hissed, shoving an accusing finger in her face.

"Where have _I _been? In a loony bin where they lock up psychos who think they talk to god! Where the hell have _you _been!"

Norah flew into an irate rage, hurling everything she could get her hands on straight through his illusory form. She railed at him, tears free flowing.

"They wanted me to believe I'm crazy! I'm not crazy!" A piggy bank she'd had for ages smashed against the wall, sending an explosion of copper pennies and porcelain shards in every direction. Loki held his hands up for her to stop.

"You shithead! You left me all alone!" she ranted. "It's your fault I was locked up there to begin with! SHIELD had a field day with me. They were ready to drag me off to their lair until I convinced them I didn't know anything – which of course I don't. You've ensured that, haven't you!? I had to lie my way out! Thank the gods you've taught me that much!" she spat hatefully.

Loki closed his eyes and steadied himself as he often did before conjuring his person more vividly. Instead he disappeared, but a sudden pressure wound around her arms, solid and squeezing her into a gentle, invisible hug. He'd rarely ever mustered the magic to touch her before and Norah broke down into sobs.

"I am so sorry, poppet." Something pressed into the palm of her hand. It was her king game piece.

"I don't feel like playing."

He pushed at it again, purposefully.

"What, Lo? Use your big boy words," she snarked irritably. She _really_ didn't feel like dealing with his mischief after what she'd endured.

"The gateway," he said, sounding spent.

Norah stared at the figurine, running a thumb over its familiar surface. The realization dawned on her.

"Oh my god," she gasped. "You can't find me without it…" He hadn't abandoned her, rather she too had been lost to him in the strange hospital so far from her usual haunts. Norah had been uprooted so quickly she'd never even had the chance to tell him where she was headed. All this time she had been cursing him when he had no doubt felt the same.

"You never explained," she wept, full of regret at their misunderstanding.

"I thought you knew," he replied somberly.

From that day forward, she never left home again without the king piece.

* * *

**A/N:** Please, please review! Think of your review as giving my Loki-muse a cookie. Don't you want to give Loki a cookie!? Waiting does NOT make it taste better. Lol. Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Thanks to those of you who reviewed, favorited, or followed this story! You are all amazing and as a treat (and to celebrate the announcement that a Thor 3 script is officially in the works), I'm sticking this chapter up early!

Also, just FYI: As you will have noticed, the **M rating** is preemptive and thus far unwarranted, but as Norah gets older her **language** becomes saucier and the **themes** will become a bit more explicit. I should also include a very **minor trigger warning** here for brief allusion to a potential non-con situation in the first few lines of the chapter.

* * *

When Norah was seventeen, she invited a boyfriend over to her place when her parents went out for the evening. Technically this was against her parents' rules, but she was practically an adult anyways, right?

Wrong.

As they crunched on popcorn and laughed at a dumb movie, she could feel the air bristle with Loki's presence. She could tell he was agitated, but ignored him. Later as she clumsily made out on the couch with her guest, things started to move too quickly.

"Wait, Chris," she whispered, pushing him back gently.

He persisted, trying to undo her jeans button.

"I said no! What is wrong with you?"

The boy tried to further force himself on her and she screamed, shoving him roughly to the floor. Suddenly Loki appeared behind him, ferociously choking the teen and snarling like a hellcat with a mad grin.

The boy struggled, sputtering, trying desperately to pry off the unseen hands that held his throat in a crushing grip. He tore at his neck frantically, scratching himself hard enough to draw blood.

"You're going to kill him! Stop!" Norah cried.

Loki hesitated, then dropped the boy to the ground with a dull thud.

"What the fuck was that?" he screamed, gasping for air.

"My guardian angel, you asshole. Now get the hell out of here!"

Clumsily he gathered his shaking limbs underneath him to flee. "Freak!" he hissed at her, frightened beyond the pale.

"You tell anyone and you're dead!" she retorted, throwing his pants at him and slamming the front door.

Loki reappeared, sitting at the foot of the stairwell. He was panting from his efforts, hair mussed.

"Are you alright?" he asked quietly, his face drawn bowstring-tight with anger.

"I'll be okay," she said, slumping down against the door. "Thank the gods for you," she sighed, running a trembling hand over her mouth.

He gave a haughty snort and tamed a chaotic lock of ink-black hair behind his ear. "I doubt any god but my dull brother is thankful for me."

"I saw him on tv again, waving his stupid hammer around. What a dilhole."

There was a long beat of silence between them before either spoke again.

"If you are ever in any grave danger…if there is another attack on this realm, for instance…you must find him. He will protect you where I cannot, Norah Fall." Loki's eyes shone with tension. He was loathe to admit his limitations – and even more hesitant to recommend his brother's company to anyone, most especially to her.

"Promise me," he insisted.

She drew in a long breathe. "I promise."

"It was lucky I could muster enough energy to incapacitate that fool. What were you thinking, associating with such dregs?"

"Dregs? He's just an idiot classmate with too many hormones. It got out of hand, but I could have taken care of myself. Stop treating me like I'm some helpless little Asgardian damsel in distress. You don't have to defend my honor!"

Loki stood abruptly, fists balled with shimmering green magic swirling about them.

"Helpless?" he ground out between clenched teeth. "Any Asgardian shield maiden would have decapitated him before he could have blinked. What he got from me was a slap on the wrist by comparison."

Norah started to shoot off a nasty response but he cut off her reply.

"And you're a stupid, silly girl to think I defend your honor. No, darling. I do not defend your honor. I defend _mine_. _YOU. ARE. MINE!_" he barked, tendrils of his magic now spinning dangerously all around him.

Shock chilled down Norah's spine but before she could utter a word, Loki's projection flickered like a dying light bulb struggling to maintain the last bit of its luminescence. He'd stretched himself too far, used too many words, used the last of some immeasurable reservoir of strength.

"You've exhausted yourself. Go rest."

He gave a thin, wistful smile and faded entirely.

The next morning she found a section of newspaper folded on her bedroom desk. An advertisement for a martial arts center was circled, accompanied by a note scrawled in the margins in Loki's familiar hand.

_Tae kwan do, capoiera, and tai chi will teach you (respectively) to be deadly, nimble, and focused. You have six months. _

It was signed as usual with an elaborately swooped and curling ornamental '_L_.'

Norah gasped in disbelief at his audacity. Loki had never interfered in her life directly. Certainly he had never demanded that she pursue something, though not surprisingly sometimes his interests did influence her own. But the same could be said of him; most of what Loki seemed to know about "Midgard," as he called it, came from her.

Almost instinctively her first urge was to refuse his request, if it could even be considered such. It was outrageous, not to mention costly.

"Villain!" she cursed, stomping her foot, just as she did when he beat her in Hnefetafl (which was most of the time).

Yet his declaration last night had stunned her and she couldn't help but feel the queasy unease of disappointment. If she was reading his vague missive correctly, Norah wouldn't see him for half a year. Had using his projection physically taxed him that much? He'd never been away so long. She worried about him – about what he was hiding from her and what she would say when he returned. She consoled herself with the thought that at least this break would give her the necessary time to digest what 'being his' meant, or more importantly, what she herself wanted it to mean. It all seemed so confusing. She was still a kid. He was an immortal god. Did he expect her to be his vestal priestess, for crying out loud? She loved him to pieces, but there was no way in Hel she was going to _worship_ the man! Loki had told her one too many fart jokes for her to ever take him that seriously.

-OOO-

In the months that followed, Loki's absence proved more difficult than she anticipated. There wasn't a day that went by where Norah didn't catch herself talking to him, though never once did she feel the telltale crackle of magic energy in the air that announced his presence to her. She coped by throwing herself into the martial arts classes he had "suggested" and wrote long letters to him. She'd leave these and other little gifts out in his favorite sunny spot by the window – dog eared books she had enjoyed, a goofy Lego action figure in his likeness. Occasionally they would inexplicably disappear and it warmed her to know he'd transported them to wherever he was. She tried to cultivate her friendships at school, but she struggled to invest herself fully in others knowing how soon they would all scatter to the wind. It was her senior year of high school and the more Norah tried to be a good mate, her thoughts increasingly turned to college and what the future might bring.

-OOO-

She should have known better when the second alien attack struck in London. Loki never spoke out of turn, never uttered something that wasn't somehow significant. Hadn't he slyly warned her of impending planetary doom? The least the jerk could do is come straight out with it, not casually drop a "Oh hey you might want to call Thor when aliens attack" and slink back into whatever intergalactic gateway he used to beam up to her side.

Norah was studying for final exams at her friend Rachel's house when the girl's mother tore through their study group screaming to turn on the news.

"Oh my god! Oh my god!" she kept repeating, pointing stupidly at the television.

Norah froze. She didn't dare breathe. They all watched as a terrifyingly familiar portal opened over England.

"Switch it to BBC," Norah calmly asked.

"What? Oh my god we're all going to die!" the woman incoherently blubbered, turning up the volume instead.

Norah carefully pried the remote from her hand and changed the channel.

"They'll have better live coverage on BBC," she explained. "Let's just see first what is going on. Maybe it won't affect us?"

For the next four hours they sat glued to that tv set, watching with bated breath. The broadcast kept replaying brief footage of Thor dropping through the hole in the sky, but nothing seemed to be happening. A giant spaceship settled over London, yet no army marched forth.

"Where are the Avengers?" Rachel cried. "Where ARE they? What is even happening!?"

Norah felt numb and flashbacks of New York seemed as fresh in her mind as the day they happened. Her phone lay on her knee at the ready, a number for the creepy SHIELD agent who had once grilled her dialed, waiting for her to press 'send.' If necessary, she was ready to give herself up, if only in the hopes the agency would connect her with Thor. She figured they probably wouldn't help her, but she owed it to Loki to try. Part of her kept hoping she'd catch a glimpse of him on screen, yet what would that mean? She didn't know whether to be relieved if she saw him or even more frightened.

Loki had intimated over the years that he may have, quote, "inadvertently encouraged," the first invasion, but he insisted it would have happened with or without him. There were mitigating circumstances, he claimed, although he refused to elaborate. Norah knew this to be true, otherwise what could explain why he stiffened at the mention of those events, or why he subconsciously pulled at the vambrace that covered an especially nasty scar on his left wrist? There was far more to the story than anyone knew, and whatever it was, it was seriously bad business.

In the end, Loki blessedly didn't appear on screen, either for or against the alien horde. Thor halted the incursion with the help of a smallish, mouse-haired physicist and the realm was saved yet again. Once the excitement drew to a close and her friends realized they were safe, the girls began to chatter away giddily about the God of Thunder and his golden mane and fluttering red cape.

"Hey guys, I'm gonna head out," Norah announced to a completely uninterested audience.

"Uh hmm," Rachel replied. "Oh, and did you hear how tall he is in real life? You know what _that _means!"

They were too preoccupied to even hear her. Norah quietly packed her bag and left without another word.

-OOO-

Seasons came and went. She graduated school with flying colors and spent the summer in Sweden to learn more about Nordic culture. It was a phenomenal time, full of far flung travel and European nightclubs and amazing art galleries. Rachel and a couple other friends accompanied her, but she couldn't help but feel that it wasn't the same without Loki.

Soon enough it was time to start college. He'd now been gone well beyond his promised six months. In the early days of his absence, Norah had almost been grateful to have time to think about her relationship with the opaque, mysterious god and where he fit into her life. Now all she could do was pray that she would ever have him in it again at all.

In her darkest moments she'd beseeched the sky, crying up to Heimdall, whom she now knew actually stood guard over the Nine Realms. She hoped beyond hope that he might take pity and send her a sinister sylph in emerald leather. At first she tried asking sweetly. Nothing happened. Then for a spell she attempted variations of jokes about how Heimdall might benefit from watching Loki screw up in Midgard or how Loki was such a jokester he probably couldn't even run Ragnarok right. Maybe she was a lousy comedian or perhaps Heimdall lacked a sense of humor, because that failed to work as well. Norah wanted to hurl insults in the end, but she figured that might be a bad way to ingratiate herself with Asgard's elite, so she turned to Frigga instead. She read up on praise poems offered to the goddess and made her garlands of flowers over which she poured honey and left under ash trees in offering. It felt completely stupid, but she also knew there was a chance, however small, that one of these Viking space aliens might actually hear her and throw her a frickin' bone. It turned out she didn't have much longer to wait.

True to form, just when she least expected Loki, he appeared as though he had never been gone at all.

"What a dump!" she heard him exclaim in disgust.

"I know, but it's supposed to be part of the whole college experience," she answered automatically. Norah suddenly paused over the box she had been unpacking in her dorm room. After all this time, she still imagined the silken voice in her head. She chastised herself inwardly for thinking her god had returned. Just to prove how silly she was, Norah tossed her long dark hair back in a huff and cast a glance over her shoulder. What she saw made her nearly collapse of a heart attack.

Loki stood in the middle of the common area, towering over her in full royal armor, larger than life. He gave her a caddish, lopsided smile. "Miss me, poppet?" he asked, cocking his ridiculous horned helmet to the side.

Norah dropped the box in her hands with a crash and bolted to him.

"Loki! Look at you!" she squeaked. She wanted to throw her arms around his neck – or punch him in the shoulder. She wasn't sure which. If only he could be solid for once.

Norah scurried to shut the door to the bustling hallway where parents and freshman were similarly busy moving in.

"I believe I owe you a belated birthday gift. But," he said, popping the final consonant with a click of his teeth, "You have to show me you've earned it."

The smile dropped off Norah's face. "What? Cmon!" Norah circled him, trying to see if he concealed something behind his back. He did have something in his hand, tucked behind his long cloak.

"Ah, ah, ah! No cheating!"

"Says the King of Cheats! Show me, Lo!"

"That is absolutely no way to speak to a god. Now let's see how the young shield maiden progresses," he said with glee, practically prancing in excitement.

She tried bargaining, explaining that there wasn't enough space in her crowded double suite to demonstrate her fighting skills. Loki was having none of it. Unfortunately, that meant waiting around until she could schedule a room in the practice gym.

By the time she was finally able to squeeze a slot into her schedule, Loki was no longer giddy about the test. She went through her paces in front of a very grave looking apparition and it made her unusually nervous. He studied her movements with excruciating intensity. When she bowed to him after her demonstration, he mumbled something disparaging about her "idiot mortal" teachers. Only she knew that Loki's projected form didn't mutter unless he intended for it to be heard.

"Seriously? You're freaking me out over there Mister Stern and Serious. It's not helping that you so obviously think I suck."

"It is not you, darling. You're clearly just reproducing what you've been taught; it is the flaws of your so-called masters that concern me. Begin again," he ordered.

"Loki, you realize you have been gone almost a year? That might not seem like much to an immortal being but I missed you terribly! I haven't been waiting around for you to return just to play ninja with you. Don't you want to know how I've been?"

"Again!" he barked sharply, cutting short her pleas. Norah shook her head in dismay and acquiesced. Loki stopped her multiple times to correct her stances, shifting an elbow in an inch, nudging her heel outward. She quickly found her movements felt far more fluid and connected as she kicked and punched her way through the air.

"Better. Now the Tai Chi. Let's try it together." Loki bowed and began to mirror her every move, copying the measured paces as her exact opposite. They glided effortlessly across the mats in a strange meditative dance. When she finished the routine, Norah felt more relaxed than she had in ages. She felt whole again. Not realizing she'd closed her eyes halfway through the exercise, Norah opened them to find Loki had popped away, leaving a polished wood box in the middle of the floor.

She knelt down to inspect it. The wood had an extraordinary luster and the top was engraved with the ornate helm and crest of Loki's divine heraldry. Norah ran her fingers over the deep etchings and swallowed as she unfastened the latch.

She gasped, unable to believe what lay before her.

Nine razor sharp, perfectly deadly throwing knives gleamed back up at her. The marbling in the Damascus steel was so fine and precisely hewn that it resembled the bark of a sacred oak; the blades were so immaculately crafted that these ribbons and swirls in the metal reflected the light in dazzling rainbows. She suspected they might be enchanted and didn't dare touch them until Loki explained their provenance.

"Thank you," she finally said, barely audible.

He was still somewhere nearby. He gave no reply. Instead she felt him ghost a kiss at her temple and dissipate into the ether.


End file.
